


Best Laid Etc (pt 1)

by abundantlyqueer



Series: Best Laid Etc [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-02-14
Updated: 2011-02-13
Packaged: 2017-10-15 15:49:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/162407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abundantlyqueer/pseuds/abundantlyqueer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock has all the information he needs … and information is all anyone needs, right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Best Laid Etc (pt 1)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ninotchka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninotchka/gifts).



_1: Sunday, 23:12_

“John, I know you’re awake. I’m coming in,” Sherlock says, opening the door slightly and then all the way.

John clears his throat loudly and pulls his hand out from under the covers.

“What’s – what’s wrong?” he asks.

“I’m going to turn the light on a bit.”

“Oh – um – okay,” John says, flipping onto his side and drawing one knee up to tent the covers discreetly over his lap.

Sherlock twists and clicks the dial, and a soft glow of light spills over everything. He pushes the door shut with his back.

“What’s wrong?” John asks again.

“Nothing, I just thought some light would help.”

John frowns, looking Sherlock up and down for some clue as to his reason for being in John’s room at all. Sherlock pushes away from the door, taking a step or two closer to the bed. He lifts his arms, strips his tee-shirt off and throws it aside, shaking his head a little to clear the hair out of his eyes again.

“Sherlock?”

Sherlock strips his pajama pants down and steps out of them, leaving himself perfectly naked. John scrambles up into a sit, bundling the bedcovers into his lap.

“What in God’s name are you _doing_?” he gapes, gaze darting from impossibility to impossibility – there is simply no reason for any man to have such long, slender arms or such pale, perfect skin …

“Providing you with a solution to a problem,” Sherlock says, as if it’s so obvious that he can’t quite believe John doesn’t see it.

“What possible problem is _this_ the solution to?”

“As long as you’re connected to me, and Sarah’s connected to you, she’s in danger,” Sherlock says as levelly as if he’s not standing eight feet from John’s bed completely and utterly nude.

In fairness, the sick pang that his statement produces in John is almost enough to distract _him_ from Sherlock’s undress.

“I know,” John says heavily.

“One of those connections has to be broken,” Sherlock says, “for her safety, and your peace of mind.”

“I have to choose between the two of you, you mean.”

“No, I mean you have to choose me, obviously,” Sherlock scowls.

“Why _obviously_?”

“Well, in the first place, if you’d never met Sarah she wouldn’t be in danger … if you’d never met me I’d be dead,” Sherlock says acidly. “I need you more than she does. And in the second place, I’m already naked.”

“Yes and that’s – confusing me a bit,” John says, squeezing his eyes shut and shaking his head as if to clear his vision. “Why are you naked?”

“You’ve lived here for twenty-six days,” Sherlock says, clearly impatient with the necessity of laying it all out for John. “Twenty-three times you’ve masturbated after you’ve gone to bed -- ”

“How the hell do you – God, no, don’t tell me,” John chokes.

“ – eleven times in the shower, and three times on the sofa downstairs when I’ve said I’ll be out until late – thanks for putting a towel underneath, by the way, can’t tell me it’s not a gentleman’s army anymore.”

John puts his hand over his eyes, with the intention of keeping it there until either he or Sherlock dies of old age.

“That’s an average of three times every two days,” Sherlock goes on. “You made a pass at me, our first evening together -- ”

“I did not,” John glares, embarrassment forgotten in his indignation.

“I said I didn’t have a boyfriend, you said _good_.”

“That wasn’t a pass, that was a … prelude to a pass,” John says, indignation fizzling like a wet fuse.

“ – and you asked Sarah out your first day with her. She’s keeping you at arm’s length – possibly because every date with you ends in a close escape from death – but you continue to pursue her with dogged determination and more than a whiff of desperation. In short, John, you are a highly sexed man who’s dissatisfied with his current outlets and actively searching for something better.”

“I – am really hoping I don’t see where this is going.”

“If it were anyone else I’d suggest you see a professional,” Sherlock says, “although if that option were acceptable to you, you wouldn’t have waited for my suggestion. How like you, John, to need some social connection before you can have sex with someone.”

“How do you know I’m not _seeing a professional_?”

“You’re a doctor, who’s provided care to a population consisting disproportionately of young adults … you wouldn’t have sex with a prostitute without using a condom, but you’ve been carrying the same dog-eared packet in your wallet ever since I met you.”

John shrugs, defeated by his own obtuseness.

“I suppose, as women go, Sarah’s not that bad,” Sherlock says grudgingly. “I mean, she’s _boring_ , but most people are … and it’s not as if some other woman would suit the situation any better. You could look for a man, but that’s just silly, bringing another man into the thing when I’m already here. Besides, I can’t trust you not to fall in love with the next person who really gets you off, so it had better be me.”

“So – I give up Sarah, and you become – what? My … boyfriend?” John says, almost laughing at the sheer ludicrousness of the thing.

“Don’t be revolting. We’ll have sex. We’ll do – whatever it is you need us to do, as often as you need us to do it.”

“And you think I’ll fall in love with you, on the strength of that,” John says, his voice a little thicker and lower than he means it to be, because there’s a twist of pure greed low down in his guts.

“It won’t matter if you do,” Sherlock says, waving his hand dismissively.

“It’ll matter to me.”

“Well, I can’t have you falling in love with someone else,” Sherlock says. “It would be all kinds of inconvenient – I need your attention to be where it ought to be.”

“On you, you mean.”

Sherlock purses his lips. John knows that if Sherlock’s not going to argue it’s not because he thinks John’s right, but because he thinks John’s so wrong there’s no point in even trying to correct him.

“What makes you think I’ll be interested in trading, anyway – Sarah for you?” John asks, though he can’t stop his gaze from skimming the long shallow curves of Sherlock’s frame.

Sherlock’s eyes flick downwards, and for a second John’s afraid that Sherlock’s staring right through John’s hands, two blankets and a sheet, and he’s going to tell to the exact millimeter just how interested John is. Sherlock’s eyes come back up to meet his.

“You’re not trading,” Sherlock says. “You’re doing the right thing by Sarah … and I’m trying to do the right thing by you. And, of course, I’m more beautiful than she is.”

“ _Really_?” John laughs.

“Oh please,” Sherlock says, turning his head so that he’s looking at John from the tilted corners of his pale cat’s eyes.

Sherlock takes another couple of steps, which puts him right next to the bed. John’s gaze skitters over pale skin, curves and hollows and sudden angles of bone, before willing himself to look Sherlock in the face.

“I know every sexual elaboration and aberration that's available in this city," Sherlock says steadily. “I know more about the human body’s capacity to process pleasure and pain than is strictly speaking legal, and I had really, _really_ a lot of sex before I gave it up … so, do you want to tell me what you’d like me to do to you? Or do you just want to go ahead and do whatever it is you like to do, to me?”

“And you have no preferences, no – parameters at all?” John says skeptically, though his breath is coming a little quicker, a little shallower.

Sherlock exhales a slight sound of amusement.

“You make a pass at anyone you find attractive; if your needs were really unusual, you’d make some effort to meet like-minded people. You are open-minded enough to act on your bisexuality, and your high sex drive has made you a sensualist -- ”

John raises his eyebrows questioningly.

“ – anyone with an itch that bad is bound to have tried some pretty unorthodox methods of scratching,” Sherlock supplies.

John grimaces, unsure whether to be flattered or insulted.

“But you’ve never done anything you’re really ashamed of, which admittedly in this day and age doesn’t rule out much … still, you’re an essentially conservative, uncomplicated man, so on balance … ”

“On balance?” John prompts warily.

“You’re not pure vanilla, but you’re not drawing dangerous amounts of blood either. John, I already trust you with my life,” Sherlock says, his voice softening. “Do I really need a safe-word?”

John shakes his head, as much bewilderment as negation.

“Move over, I’m getting in with you,” Sherlock says, gesturing to the bed.

“Sherlock, I don’t -- ”

“It’s cold out here, I may not be showing to advantage,” Sherlock says, gripping the bedcovers and throwing them back.

John scrambles back, still sitting bolt upright. Sherlock gets into bed, sliding down on one hip and leaning on one elbow as he turns to face John. John stares down at Sherlock; Sherlock tips his head back to look up at John.

“You’re trying to find the flaw in my logic,” Sherlock says mildly, lifting his hand and letting his fingers hover in the air in front of John’s chest. “There isn’t one.”

He touches, just a whisper of fingertips against sweatshirt cotton, and John’s breath shudders in his chest.

“Come down here,” Sherlock says, in a tone that doesn’t permit discussion.

John straightens his legs out and slides down a bit, leaning on his elbows. Sherlock looks down the length of John’s body, smiling slyly at the inelegant tent of his erection inside his pajama pants. Sherlock reaches down, one long slender arm with softly corded muscles turning under milky skin, grasps the bedcovers and pulls them up over them both. John’s body eases a little, no longer so utterly exposed.

“Come here,” Sherlock says more gently, his hand fitting the curve of John’s waist and guiding him, rolling him onto his side to face Sherlock.

John stares fixedly at the hollow at the base of Sherlock’s throat, between his collarbones, where a pale blue pulse beats steadily under the skin. Sherlock’s hand slips under the edge of John’s sweatshirt, fingertips grazing John’s skin. John eyes fall closed, and his lips fall open.

“Oh … _God_ ,” he says quietly.

“Anything you want, John … any way you want it.”

John squeezes his eyes closed tighter, presses his lips together too.

“It’s alright,” Sherlock says softly. “You don’t have to tell me right now … we can start with something very simple.”

He slips his hand from John’s waist and reaches down to the front of his pajama pants. His open palm covers John’s erection. John’s eyes snap open, and he grabs Sherlock’s wrist so tightly that he can feel the small bones grating together in his grip. Sherlock locks eyes with him, gaze cool and steady while John’s eyes flicker and dart. Gradually John’s grip eases just enough for Sherlock to be able to twist his wrist and pull free. Sherlock touches again, his long narrow palm covering as much of John’s erection as possible. He presses, and the beat of pleasure through John’s body is almost sickening it’s so strong. His cock pulses hard, pushing into Sherlock’s hand.

“Hush,” Sherlock says, eyes shining.

“I didn’t -- say anything,” John says, his breath catching as Sherlock cups his hand more closely around John’s cock, squeezing him through the thin fabric of his pajama pants.

“You’re thinking, I can hear you,” Sherlock says, testing a slight up and down stroke with the heel of his hand.

“I’m – Jesus – I’m really not thinking,” John says. “If I were thinking, I wouldn’t be going along with this.”

“There’s noise in your head,” Sherlock insists, finding the wet spot of fabric that marks the opening of John’s glans and flicking one finger across it lightly.

“That’s not thinking, that’s -- pleading,” John admits.

Sherlock smiles crookedly.

“Now that you mention it, it does have a rather mellifluous quality to it,” he says.

He slips his hand up under John’s sweatshirt again, turns his wrist, and slides his hand down inside the front of his pajama pants.

“Is that what you -- _want_ ,” John gasps as Sherlock’s fingers touch naked flesh. “For me to beg?”

“Only if begging makes you come harder.”

“Oh my God,” John says, as Sherlock’s fingers close tightly around his cock, and Sherlock starts to work skin up and down on the underlying rigidity.

“I told you what I want,” Sherlock husks, leaning closer. “I want to get you off … I want it to be so good, so _hard_ , so much with me that you stop looking for anyone else.”

“Oh – God,” John pants.

“Come on, John,” Sherlock coaxes.

He eases his grip, shifts it higher to work John’s foreskin around his glans.

“Jesus – fuck,” John gasps.

His body tips, falling against Sherlock’s, chest to chest and thighs to thighs. John loops his lower arm awkwardly around Sherlock’s bare shoulders, and presses his face into the long curve of his neck. John’s upper hand falters on Sherlock’s skin – arm and shoulder and back, before burying itself in his hair. John starts to move, hips jerking rapidly as he thrusts himself into Sherlock’s fist.

“Jesus,” John hisses, “ _Jesus_.”

“Come on,” Sherlock murmurs. “Come on.”

“I’m not going to last, this is -- too much,” John says breathlessly.

“It doesn’t matter – we’ve got all night – and all night every night for as long as it takes me to wring you out.”

“ _Shit_ ,” John says, his spine arching convulsively as he comes in half a dozen thudding pulses.

“Good, good, well done,” Sherlock smiles, his hand just stroking out the last shivers of sensation.

“Oh shit,” John groans, his eyes closed and his face still hidden against Sherlock’s throat. “Oh … _shit_.”

“No, no, no second-guessing,” Sherlock snaps, kicking the covers back and extracting his hand from John’s pajama pants. “Look at me, John -- _look at me_.”

John rolls onto his back and opens his eyes reluctantly, to see Sherlock looming over him.

“Don’t stop now,” Sherlock says fiercely. “Come on man. I’m offering you anything you want and you’re going to cash out after a two-minute wank?”

John exhales a shaky smile.

“It was a hell of a two minutes, though,” he says.

“It was nothing, it wasn’t even the wrapping on nothing,” Sherlock says, eyes snapping. “You want me to suck you? Fuck you? Or you fuck me – tie me up – sodomize me with random household objects -- ”

“God you are … terrifying,” John says wonderingly.

“Yes but does terrifying get you off?” Sherlock demands. “Do you want me to be terrifying? Or _terrified_ \--?”

“I want – I want you to be _quiet_ for a minute,” John says.

Sherlock closes his mouth with a visible effort, his eyes raging like a pale firestorm trapped behind glass.

“Good, that’s – good,” John says in relief. “That’s wonderful.”

Sherlock widens his eyes and presses his lips together more tightly. John stifles a smile. He reaches up, fingers sliding through the curls clustering around Sherlock’s ear. Sherlock’s eyes look as if they’re trying to dig their way through John’s eyes and into his brain. John cups his hand around the nape of Sherlock’s neck and pulls down. There’s a second of utter resistance, and then Sherlock gives the slight nasal sigh that means he thinks John is being incredibly dull but Sherlock’s going to indulge him. Sherlock yields, a little stutter of movement that brings him down onto John, knees outside John’s, elbows next to John’s ribs, hands gripping the pillow that’s under John’s head. Sherlock’s sufficiently taller that being face-to-face with him leaves John’s softened cock and wet pajama pants cupped in the hollow between Sherlock’s hipbones.

John can feel the tension singing through Sherlock’s body, every muscle and tendon held carefully in place. John thrusts his chin upwards, and catches Sherlock’s mouth with his. Sherlock ratchets his head down a few more degrees, accepting John’s kiss. John curls the tip of his tongue against Sherlock’s top lip, and Sherlock opens his mouth a little, a little more. John slips his tongue between Sherlock’s teeth, scoops softly into his mouth. Sherlock’s brows furrow together. John kisses deeper, harder, both hands smoothing firmly over Sherlock’s skin … shoulders, back, down to the curve of his behind. Sherlock’s tongue flickers against John’s, his breath slow and warm on John’s cheek. John groans and turns his head aside.

“Get off me,” he says reluctantly, pushing Sherlock’s shoulders.

“What? _Why_?” Sherlock protests. “It’s going splendidly, considering.”

“Because these pajamas are getting disgusting, I need to take them off.”

“Ah, right,” Sherlock beams, rolling aside.

John wriggles his pajama pants down and off, and wipes himself clean in them before wadding them up and pitching them on towards the laundry hamper. He turns back to Sherlock, gaze skating up his long narrow feet, up his legs to –

“Of course,” John says flatly.

“Of course what?” Sherlock asks, but his smile’s already curdling at the sight of John’s expression turning tight and closed.

“It’s going splendidly, considering you’re not actually attracted to me at all.”

“What are you -- _ah_ ,” Sherlock says, calculating the last trajectory of John’s line of sight. “You’re offended because I’m not hard.”

John grimaces.

“Don’t worry,” Sherlock says. “If and when you need me to be hard, I’ll get hard.”

“So you have voluntary control over that?” John says tightly.

Sherlock lifts his eyebrows in faint exasperation.

“I’ve been celibate,” he says. “Physical arousal would have been a pointless, wasteful distraction … of course I developed voluntary control over it.”

John wipes his hand over his face.

“Take the sweatshirt off,” Sherlock says.

“What?”

“Your sweatshirt … take it off. Please.”

John’s eyes flicker aside, away, but he does as Sherlock asks, pulling his sweatshirt up from the back so that it bares his chest last. There’s a dark red star of shiny scar-tissue on the front of his left shoulder. He twists the sweatshirt into a knot, and then drops it off the side of the bed.

“Is it painful?” Sherlock asks, fingers ghosting around the thick curve of John’s shoulder, and then across chest muscle and rays of scar-tissue.

“No, just – ugly.”

“There’s nothing ugly about you, John.”

“You’re being kind,” John says, though the ghost of a smile in his eyes shows that he appreciates the gesture.

“I am never kind,” Sherlock says. “You know that.”

He takes John by the shoulders and draws him in, kissing him, coaxing him with gentle nudges of his mouth against John’s lips. John closes his eyes, his body easing against Sherlock’s, skin to skin. Sherlock’s two hands slide up John’s throat, along his jaw, around the backs of his ears.

“You are … perfect,” Sherlock whispers, his lips barely leaving John’s. “A perfect example of your type.”

John scowls in faint confusion but his body yields liquidly, swaying softly under Sherlock’s hands as they stroke back down his neck, down his arms, thumbs following the valleys where John’s shoulder muscles meet his biceps. His fingers trail back up over the swell of John’s left shoulder, over the blurring colors of the wreathed rod and snake tattooed at the top of John’s arm.

“Really … perfect in every detail.”

Sherlock traps John’s mouth again, and John buries both hands in his hair and kisses back with a will. Sherlock’s breath catches low in his throat, a little vibration of sound. John pulls away, presses his lips to Sherlock’s throat.

“Oh God that … that _has_ been a long time,” Sherlock husks.

John pulls back, stares at Sherlock.

“What?”

Sherlock looks down. John follows his line of sight, to see Sherlock’s cock half-lifted from where it rests against Sherlock’s thigh.

“Wha – how long has it been?” John laughs.

“Thirteen years, give or take,” Sherlock says. “My _God_ that feels bizarre.”

“You are … extraordinary.”

“Thank you,” Sherlock smiles, lifting his chin in genuine pleasure.

“Extraordinary and completely insane,” John says, leaning forward again.

“Oh, now that’s just rank flattery,” Sherlock purrs, letting John push him back down onto the bed.

Sherlock is all long, heavy bones under sleek, slender flesh … pale skin marked here and there with a dark mole or two. John watches his own hands – square and solid and deeply tanned – moving on Sherlock’s body. He strokes callused palms down Sherlock’s chest, thumbs cutting along the faint haze of dark, silky hair on his breastbone, and then down over the smoothly rising and falling curve of his ribs, into the taut bowl of his stomach. Sherlock stirs very slightly, long limbs stretching and then easing. John traces his hands lower, over the sharp crests of his hipbones, down to the swirl of dark hair.

“That’s really not -- necessary, John,” Sherlock says, even as his hips tilt precipitously under John’s hand. “It’s just a matter of my directing my attention to -- ”

“You said you’d do anything I wanted,” John says, lifting his head to look Sherlock in the face.

“Well, yes but -- ”

“What I want,” John says, “is for you to be _quiet_ , and let me touch – and taste – every inch of your skin. Can you do that?.”

Sherlock’s breath comes out sharply, and even in the dim light John thinks he can see the color come up on his cheekbones, but when Sherlock speaks his voice is perfectly steady.

“Well of course I can do _that_.”

John refrains from saying that, based on his personal observations, Sherlock can’t let anyone do anything without a running commentary of criticism. Instead, John shifts upwards, his weight braced above Sherlock on both hands. John uses the tip of his nose to push Sherlock’s curls aside, and then presses kisses along his hairline, into the hollows of his temples, along the diffuse dark curves of his eyebrows. Sherlock’s hands falter over John’s skin, and come to rest on his waist.

John takes his time. His fingertips map each place where bone emerges from under muscle or sinks back beneath it, each place where skin becomes taut and silky, or soft and plush. He follows his fingertips with his lips, kissing, dragging his teeth softly over skin, then kissing again. Sherlock stirs, strains, sinks back into watchful stillness. John explores the crease of skin where Sherlock’s right arm joins his body, the vein-shadowed hollow inside his elbow, the heavy bones of his wrist. He takes Sherlock’s hand and unfurls the long, thin fingers, kissing and sucking and stroking the tip of his tongue against the thin webs of skin where fingers join to palm. John glances at Sherlock, to see him staring back with the faintly offended surprise of being confronted by a fact that doesn’t fit his favorite theory. John drops his gaze deliberately, refusing to be distracted.

He shifts lower, pressing his lips to the flat planes of Sherlock’s chest. One of Sherlock’s hands cups the curve of John’s skull, the other comes to rest between his shoulder blades.

“Beautiful,” John murmurs, the word shaped against the taut skin of Sherlock’s stomach.

Sherlock makes a breathy sound, his body flexing a little under John. John reaches down, stroking the back of his hand along the inside of Sherlock’s thigh. There’s the faintest bite of Sherlock’s fingernails into John’s back. He brings his hand back up Sherlock’s thigh, knuckles brushing the underside of his balls. The hand on John’s back tenses, fist pressing into flesh. John lifts his head to look cinder-eyed at Sherlock, who’s wide-eyed and shaping each breath with great deliberateness. John bends his head again, hands wandering softly, lips working the crest of Sherlock’s hipbone. Sherlock’s hand softens, splays open on John’s back again. He dips, both hands spread on the fronts of Sherlock’s thighs, and captures the top of his cock in his open mouth.

Sherlock’s body jerks, tenses into stillness. John pulls off again, looks up.

“Is this okay? I mean it’s not … too much?” he asks.

Sherlock smirks at the ceiling.

“John, _too much_ would require several more men than currently live in this entire street.”

“Right. Of course,” John says dryly. “I’ll just – help myself, then.”

“Anything you like,” Sherlock says, drawing one knee up and letting it fall to the side.

The twist of sheer want in John’s guts completely overwhelms the desire to tell Sherlock that what John would like is for Sherlock’s exquisite body not to be accompanied by Sherlock’s personality. Instead, John bends his head and kisses the inside of Sherlock’s knee, and then mouths up the inside of his thigh, nosing into the warm crease between groin and balls. Sherlock’s foot arches, long toes splaying apart. John licks, sucks, letting his eyes fall closed and giving himself up to taste and smell and texture.

John takes Sherlock’s cock into his mouth, using the flat of his tongue to gently work the foreskin all the way back from the glans. Sherlock is rock hard and could presumably take rougher handling, but John’s indulging himself. He’s had the frantic _oh God I didn’t die by the side of the road_ sex, and the slightly more composed _I didn’t die from that at all_ sex, but the fully considered _now I guess I go back to living a real life_ sex hasn’t happened until now. Admittedly, this isn’t the _real life_ John expected, but it’s a life that fits him better than he could have hoped. Especially if its surrealisms are to include Sherlock, beautifully naked and indulgently indifferent under John’s mouth and hands.

John lifts his chin slowly, lets Sherlock’s cock drop from his mouth.

“Turn over,” John says softly, drawing back to give Sherlock room to move.

Sherlock lifts himself, flips, and then hesitates with his body braced in a single long line from his shoulders to the arches of his feet. After a beat, he lies down on his stomach, arms folded under his face, legs slightly parted but stretched out as straight and taut as arrows. John leans over him, extending his own body over Sherlock’s, pressing his stomach to Sherlock’s back, breathing kisses into the nape of Sherlock’s neck and the tips of his curls. Sherlock frowns, fingers flexing under his cheek.

John slides his body luxuriously on Sherlock’s skin, shifts downwards. He kisses, bites, sucks the skin between Sherlock’s shoulder blades, down his spine, hands shaping the curves of his behind, and then mouths down the back of each thigh. John can hear the slide of skin on cotton as Sherlock turns his face into the pillow. John licks broad-tongued along the curve of one buttock, presses his fingertips between Sherlock’s thighs and pushes outwards. Sherlock’s legs come apart a little; Sherlock makes a breathy little noise that shivers into silence as John noses gently against his own hands, breathing heat and humidity on the underside of Sherlock’s genitals. John licks, softly, smoothly. Sherlock rolls his shoulders, snakes his spine, his legs opening farther. John huffs heat into his skin, fingertips probing and stroking and sliding his own saliva along the cleft. Sherlock pushes up onto his elbows, head dropped forward, shoulder blades straining under his skin like wings. John pushes deeper, tongue stabbing softly at Sherlock’s anus, fingers circling and caressing.

“ _Oh_ … ” Sherlock breathes, and it’s a sound of confusion.

John untangles himself, shoulders Sherlock over onto his back in a soft spill of long limbs, and then leans in. He bends his head and takes Sherlock’s cock in his mouth again, sucks deeply, long strong pulls without respite. Sherlock’s body arches tensely. John nudges his fingers back behind Sherlock’s balls, between his buttocks, against his anus.

John pushes two fingertips in, and his whole body shudders as the shock of heat and softness goes through him. Sherlock writhes, trying to simultaneously push back against John’s fingers and forwards into John’s mouth. John pushes his fingers a little deeper, sucks harder, sustaining the pressure at both places. Sherlock’s hands smear on the sheets and his heels dig into the mattress as he tries to hold still. John can feel him shaking, and then very slowly his body eases. One of his hands comes to rest almost weightlessly on John’s head.

“Oh my God,” Sherlock says very clearly.

John lets the slow deep tide of Sherlock’s breath set the pace, sucking and stroking, forehead resting on Sherlock’s stomach and free hand tracing formless patterns on his hip and thigh. Sherlock’s body arches extravagantly, his head thrown back and his eyes closed. John’s hard again, aching as if he hasn’t been touched in forever.

“Oh … my God,” Sherlock says hoarsely. “ _John_ … ”

John feels the heat of his own name all over his skin. He flattens his hand on Sherlock’s stomach to pin him down, and peels away.

“You’re stopping,” Sherlock says sharply, struggling up onto his elbows. “Are you stopping for good? Stopping for air?”

“Lubricant,” John says, trying to commandeer enough of his own brain to figure out what to use. “We’re not going any farther without a lubricant.”

“In my pajamas,” Sherlock says, jerking his chin in the direction of his discarded clothes.

“You carry lubricant in your pajamas?” John says, getting off the bed and finding his legs unexpectedly incompetent.

“Not unless I’m offering you free run of my body.”

John shakes a plastic tube out of the pocket of Sherlock’s pajama pants and knees his way back onto the bed, between Sherlock’s thighs. He flips the cap on the tube, squeezes an extravagant amount of gel onto his fingers. He slips his hand into the cleft of Sherlock’s behind, smoothing gel as he goes. Sherlock groans, a big rough rumble of sound, and spreads his legs wider. He draws one knee up, hooking his foot around John’s hip and trying to pull him in.

“Slow down,” John says, putting Sherlock’s foot aside. “Thirteen years since you’ve even had an erection? Let’s just take a minute here.”

“Come on, John, it’s like riding a bicycle,” Sherlock says, brows furrowed but lips curling in amusement.

“Have you actually ridden a bicycle, after a thirteen year break?” John asks.

“Well of course not -- ”

“Well then _shut up_ and let me see how we’re doing,” John says firmly.

Sherlock drops from his elbows, thudding his head and shoulders back into the pillow. John hooks two fingertips into the circle of muscle, twists a little, pushes in a little. Sherlock exhales audibly, but he seems relaxed. John withdraws his fingers a fraction, then pushes deeper. Sherlock’s body is brutally tight, but not actively resistant.

“Seems doable,” John says, for his own benefit.

“You want to check the old prostate while you’re there, Doctor?” Sherlock says crisply.

John looks at Sherlock, who’s folded his arms across his bare chest to better convey the crashing dullness of John’s scruples.

“Okay,” John says flatly.

He curls his fingers and pushes up hard. Sherlock’s body bows, his cock flexing up off his stomach, and he grabs for the flat surface of the bed.

“Oh – God,” he gasps.

“Seems perfectly normal,” John says lightly, pushing up and making ghost-circles with his fingertips, judging the right amount of pressure by Sherlock’s inability to find an inhale.

“ _That_ cannot be normal,” Sherlock gasps when John relents – a little – and switches to a slow deep thrust with his fingers. “It didn’t feel like that last time.”

“Didn’t feel like this?” John says, curling and pushing and then grinning as Sherlock’s spine arches clear off the bed.

“Oh my _God_ ,” Sherlock says. “What the hell happened to me?”

“Adulthood,” John laughs, slipping his fingers out and hooking his thumb in instead. “The last time you had any kind of receptive sex you were – what? Not all that long out of your teens, anyway.”

“A week short of twenty,” Sherlock says, his body coiling lazily around the sensation of John’s thumb twisting and pressing.

“Well, things change -- _bodies_ change,” John says, amused to be stating the obvious for Sherlock’s benefit.

“Mine doesn’t,” Sherlock says indignantly.

John’s too much of a soldier to argue if he can just act. He switches from thumb to fingers again, thrusting smoothly a few times and then pushing up in slow circles while Sherlock strains and shakes.

“Do you need to come before I fuck you?” John asks, his voice steady despite the way his heart is hammering in his chest.

“No I’m … fine, I’m … fantastic,” Sherlock says.

John slips his fingers out of Sherlock’s body, stripes another squirt of gel into his hand and coats his own cock. He knees in closer, tucking his thighs under Sherlock’s. He takes hold of Sherlock’s ankle, guiding his foot upwards. Sherlock lifts the other foot, shifts his weight into John’s lap and settles with the backs of his knees folded over John’s shoulders. John takes hold of his own cock, rubbing himself along the cleft of Sherlock’s behind.

“I’ll take it easy,” John says seriously.

“As long as you do take it.”

John leans a little, just setting the head of his cock against Sherlock’s anus. A little more lean, and he’s pushing at the muscle, and Sherlock flexes his body, exhales, and John slips in a bit, a bit more. He pulls his weight back – not withdrawing, just easing the intensity of the stretch for a second. Then forward, just letting his weight carry him in deeper. Sherlock groans.

“Sherlock, I know you keep saying _anything_ , but I kind of need to hear you say that specifically _this_ is okay,” John says shakily.

“This is okay, this is … fine, actually,” Sherlock says, and John can hear him steadying and … somehow _cooling_ from word to word.

“Okay. Fine,” John says, frowning.

He stirs his hips a little, just playing the pressure inside Sherlock’s body.

“Strangely, I’ve never been fucked by a doctor before,” Sherlock announces, brow furrowed in concentration. “Can’t think how I let that pass … ”

John sucks his lips between his teeth and suppresses the urge to just shove hard. He eases his weight again, and then pushes forwards, sliding most of the way in.

“Anatomical teaching’s completely wasted on them,” Sherlock says, “though … I think you paid some attention.”

“And I think you talk so you don’t have to _feel_ ,” John says, the truth of it only apparent to him after he’s said it.

“What?” Sherlock asks, his mouth mimicking amusement but his eyes wary.

“As long as you talk you’re in control – but in order to hold your tongue you have to let go of absolutely everything else.”

“Don’t try to psychoanalyze me,” Sherlock says, his eyes slicing away from John’s face. “You’ll only get hurt.”

“So prove me wrong … stay quiet.”

“Ridiculous,” Sherlock says, but he closes his mouth ostentatiously.

John circles his hips a little. Sherlock’s eyes flicker. John draws back, catching his own lip in his teeth, the bite of pain a necessary focus-point in the sweet slide of friction around his cock. He pushes in again. The position is perfect – there’s no weight, no strain, just the tight wringing of Sherlock’s body. John rocks slowly, letting the sparkle of each stroke die out on his nerves before he makes the next one. He cups his spine, pressing his cock forwards inside Sherlock’s body. With the distraction of greater stretch, Sherlock’s response is less sharp, but there’s a slow tidal writhe to his hips that makes John smile.

“God,” Sherlock says softly, “that feels … ”

“Bizarre?” John supplies.

“Good … just … really good.”

John crooks an eyebrow, sure there’s a sting to come, but Sherlock just rolls his head loosely from side to side on the pillow. John’s body flexes smoothly with his strokes, hips and spine and shoulders carrying the movement. He’s in a perfect place, pleasure rolling steadily through him but not urgent or insistent yet. He rounds his hips, cups his spine every two or three strokes. Sherlock’s breathing gets harsher.

“Put your legs down,” John murmurs, “it’ll be better for you like that.”

Sherlock frowns, the very tight sour frown that means he knows he’s missing some important fact and he’s frustrated with himself. John strokes his hands up Sherlock’s thighs, and Sherlock lets his knees slide out and down John’s shoulders, so that he’s lying stretched out with his behind in John’s lap.

Sherlock exhales through bared teeth, parsing the change of angle. John starts to move again, and Sherlock groans appreciatively. John takes advantage of Sherlock’s more exposed position, fingertips following the curves of his ribs and stomach and hips.

“God,” Sherlock groans.

John takes hold of Sherlock’s cock, leftover gel on John’s palm making the slide sharper and more sudden than John really intends. Sherlock arches, gasping, and that movement steepens and deepens the thrust of John’s cock and now Sherlock is just coming apart, writhing, grinding his hips down on John’s thighs and then rocking them upwards to thrust his cock into John’s fist.

“God – oh God,” Sherlock gasps.

John catches Sherlock by both hips, pulling him in tighter.

“God, don’t stop,” Sherlock snaps, glaring at John’s hands as if holding the two of them equally responsible for abandoning his cock.

“Well then don’t thrash – I’m going to lose you. Hands on the wall – give me some brace here.”

Sherlock throws his arms up, splaying his hands flat against the wall above the pillows. He pushes back, driving his body down on John’s cock. John gapes as a concussive beat of pleasure goes through him.

“I’m going to go harder,” he says, lifting his eyebrows questioningly.

“You’re going to go _a lot_ harder,” Sherlock says tightly.

John grips Sherlock’s cock in one hand, the other hand on Sherlock’s hip. John draws back slowly, then kicks his hips forwards. The jerk is enough to slide his fist on Sherlock’s cock by a couple of inches. Sherlock’s breath beats out from his open mouth. John draws back again, shoves forwards again.

“God – come on,” Sherlock says.

John keeps the out strokes controlled, slow … and makes each thrust in as sudden and deep as he can. Sherlock’s breath punches out each time he’s caught between John’s cock and John’s fist. John breathes in big shaking gasps, turns his head from side to side to knock the building tension of his muscles.

“Come _on_ ,” Sherlock says loudly.

He twists his hips, thrusts, rubbing his cock in John’s fist. John’s left to deal with what that’s doing to the connection between John’s cock and Sherlock’s ass – which is, frankly, wrecking him. It’s impossible to impose any kind of order or control. His body is just gorging itself on sensation, nerves frying as Sherlock pulls away, and then floundering in an explosion of pleasure each time Sherlock pushes down again. John thrusts hard, as deep as he can when Sherlock’s squirming around so much.

“God – God - _God_ ,” Sherlock growls.

John can feel sweat trickling between his own shoulder blades, and his heart hammering in triple time, and his breath scouring through his throat. His cock is pure heat, his balls pure pressure.

“ _Shit_ – I’m going to come if we keep this up, we need to slow down,” he snaps.

“Doesn’t matter, _do not stop_ ,” Sherlock says, grinding himself down into John’s lap with even more intensity.

“Okay – alright – ethmoid, frontal, occipital, parietal,” John gasps, stabbing himself ruthlessly into Sherlock’s writhing, wringing body. “Sphenoid, temporal, shit _fuck_ I’m coming I can’t stop.”

Sherlock cries out, a wordless shapeless sound of purely animal pleasure, and John just folds into fire. His orgasm tears through him, big bold beats of pleasure and relief that bend him down over Sherlock’s body and leave him gasping for air while his vision spangles slowly back out of the black. Sherlock lets his hands slip down from the wall, his arms falling into loose curves above his head. His breathing is quick, but deep and even.

“Jesus fuck,” John reels, sitting up and drawing back enough to let his cock slide wetly free from Sherlock’s body.

“I think – I think they’ve improved that since the last time I had it,” Sherlock says.

John exhales a laugh. Sherlock bends one leg, giving John room to move aside. John folds down onto his stomach next to Sherlock, drops his face into the crook of his own arm. Sherlock touches the neat coin of scar tissue on the back of John’s shoulder.

“Sorry, didn’t … get quite the mileage I should have, there,” John says breathlessly, voice muffled against his skin.

Sherlock shrugs, an elaborate shift of hands and head and shoulders.

“Not a problem … best of three? It’s barely midnight.”

He’s smiling, but there’s a glint of something sharp and steely in his eyes.

“Change ends?” John asks, his head still down and his breath still staggering in his chest a bit.

“Ye … es,” Sherlock says. “Yes, I think so.”


End file.
